● nature ● wildlife ● conservation ● sustainability ●

nest

You may remember that last year I posted regularly about a breeding pair of peregrine falcons on Nottingham Trent University’s Newton building… well it is once again that time of year when they will begin nesting, ready to lay eggs and rear their young! I have already started checking the live webcams and have seen the female on several occasions sitting on the ledge around the nest site, so I expect that in a month or so we will see a clutch of eggs in the scrape! This year is extra exciting though, as not only will I be watching and blogging about the Nottingham peregrines, but also the Coventry AND Leicester pairs!

Why Coventry? Well, last Christmas I was gifted an ‘adopted’ peregrine through Warwickshire Wildlife Trust which supports the “amazing falcon that has made its home at the top of Holy Trinity Church and Coventry Cathedral”, so of course I will be following their story over this breeding season, as well as throughout the rest of the year.

Why Leicester? Being my home town, I have followed the Leicester Peregrine Project (a collaboration between the Leicestershire and Rutland Ornithological Society and Leicester City Council) for quite a while now, and try to spot and watch the peregrines on the Cathedral whenever I go into the city centre. Last year I wrote about how they hoped to install a live camera, which unfortunately did not happen during the 2017 season… but I am happy and excited to find that the live stream is now available to watch on their website! The camera is positioned brilliantly on the “5-star nest platform”, providing an intimate view of the nest site and close-ups of the gorgeous birds. What is also great is that there is a daily written commentary alongside the video, so we won’t miss a thing – such as the fact that there has been lots of ‘bond-posturing’ and calling recently, which is a very good sign. Last year, the Leicester pair did actually lay a clutch of eggs, but sadly they were all unsuccessful… so I am keeping my fingers crossed that we see some chicks this year! I will make sure to keep you all posted.

It has been an action-packed few weeks for the NTU peregrine falcon chicks. After spending a week in Dartmoor (me, not the chicks) with little internet access, I returned on May 26th to discover that all four were out of the nest and exploring the surrounding ledge. Most of their down had been replaced by stunning feathers and they were looking truly beautiful and elegant.

They have since been feeding themselves, flapping their wings, spending more time on their own and out of sight of the cameras, but on June 1stcamera one captured something extremely dramatic (and a little bit funny if you keep watching it) which you can view in slow motion here.

As you can see, one of the chicks attempted to fly and ended up crashing into its mother causing them to tumble off the edge of the building! Luckily both were fine and the chick landed on a lower ledge. As the chick had not properly fledged and was unable to fly, it could not return to the nest, however it has been reported that the adults have continued to feed it! Despite this, I (and I am sure many others) have been a little worried about the chick over the last few days in the rain and wind… and unfortunately I have some sad news. After following the peregrine falcons throughout the whole nesting cycle, it breaks my heart to announce that earlier today the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust reported that one of the chicks (I am not entirely sure whether it was the one on the lower ledge) had “been killed yesterday on the road below the ledge”. It is assumed that “it got blown off or lost control of a flight in the ferocious wind we have been experiencing”. Obviously this is a terrible shame as the four chicks were each doing brilliantly, but it is important to know and remember that less than a third of peregrines actually reach breeding age, so the family have still done very well. Those peregrines that do reach breeding age are expected to live for 6-13 years, but the oldest known peregrine was over 16 years old! So let’s keep our fingers crossed for the remaining three!

As hoped, today was the day that the fourth NTU peregrine falcon chick hatched out of its egg. I checked the live stream at 13:15 after my sister messaged me about them… and there it was, it had hatched just before 1pm! The male was feeding the larger chicks a feral pigeon as chick number four (being less than half an hour old) was getting used to the world and its siblings.

The newly hatched chick and its siblings waiting for food.

After a few minutes, Mrs P returned to the scrape and I just managed to save a still image of the whole family together! WARNING: Some may find the below image disturbing.

All four chicks (eyases) are being kept warm and fed and are looking healthy and ‘wide-beaked’ this evening. Peregrine falcon chicks eat a tremendous amount of food and if all goes well, this time next week they will have doubled their weight and in three weeks, will be ten times their birth size! I am very much looking forward to following their progress over the next six weeks or so as they rapidly get bigger, grow juvenile feathers and eventually fledge the nest. Once they start to fly they will depend on their parents for a few further weeks to learn how to hunt, so Archie and Mrs P still have a lot of work to do… and we still have a lot of great things to watch!

Last autumn I was told about a pair of peregrine falcons that had been nesting on Nottingham Trent University’s Newton building for more than a decade, with support from the university and Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. I was eager to learn more so was delighted to find a webpage dedicated to them, containing a live-stream, photographs and FAQs. Obviously at the time, the nest was empty, but I added the website to my ‘favourites’ ready for the falcons’ return in the new breeding season.

I started checking the live-stream at the end of February this year and first saw the female peregrine falcon return to the nest in early March. Since then, I have been watching both the male and female preparing the site and making a “scrape” in the box ready for egg-laying and excitingly, on Friday morning (17th March) I clicked on the live-stream to see the female ‘crouching’ and the male having a good old look!! After a few minutes, a lovely brown egg was laid, the male flew off and the female began brooding instantly. What a great thing to watch live!

Over the next week or so, she may lay 2-3 more eggs and if all goes well, we will see them hatch in around six weeks, soon after Easter. Then the fun will begin… feeding, growing and fledging!

The nest site has previously been very successful, with the faithful pair of peregrine falcons returning year after year and 32 chicks fledging in the last seven years. However, last year, almost straight after the young had fledged, a new male peregrine was spotted around the site and the “resident male was seen less and less often, until he disappeared completely”. It is believed that as he was old, he gave up his nest and may have died. The cycle of life continues though, and the new male, who was ringed as a juvenile in London in 2012, clearly liked the site and returned this year with his partner – allowing us to follow them this season on the live-stream.

City centres such as Nottingham and urban areas have been colonised by peregrine falcons in recent times due to the fact that “tall buildings mimick their natural crag or cliff environment” and therefore provide them with safe nesting sites. Also, peregrine falcons feed almost exclusively on medium-sized birds such as pigeons, so cities are an ideal place for them.

As expected, Nottingham is not the only city centre to be home to peregrine falcons in the midlands… my home-town of Leicester is too! YES! “In February 2014, a partnership between the Leicestershire and Rutland Ornithological Society (LROS) and Leicester City Council (LCC) was formed called Leicester Peregrines to monitor the habits and activities of a known pair of Peregrine Falcons in Leicester city centre”. They had been spotted on several tall buildings including Leicester Cathedral, but did not have a specific nesting site. As a result, “in January 2016, the Leicester Peregrine Project was given permission by Leicester Cathedral to remove one of the louvres within the bell tower/spire” in order to build a nest-box. Although they did not use the box last year (they did rear two chicks elsewhere), it appears that this year the pair may have taken up residence. Hopefully in the next few weeks, a live-stream camera will be installed, or failing that, webcam photographs will be added to the website revealing whether or not any eggs have been laid.

The Leicester Peregrines Team from the LROShold regular ‘Peregrine Watch Point’ sessions with telescopes and binoculars in the grounds of Leicester Cathedral, starting around 9:30am in St. Martin’s Square until around 2:00pm. The proposed dates for this year are 19 April, 17 May, 15 June, 12 July, 9 August, 20 September, 11 October, 15 November and 9 December. As these usually take place whilst I am at work, I decided to nip to the site with my camera at the weekend and spotted the pair straight away. They were very high up on the spire, but I zoomed in as much as possible and managed to get a few decent photographs.